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An Unusual, Adventurous, Indiana Jones-Type Vacation Company

There are those among us for whom a quiet vacation sipping tropical drinks on a pearly beach beside a sapphire blue ocean holds no sway. These same people would also likely yawn at the prospect of visiting an urban world capital, lunching at a refined café between shopping expeditions at fine boutiques. For these very particular souls, an adventure vacation with Epic Tomato may be just what the doctor ordered.

The latest offering from Black Tomato – a high-end, custom vacation-organizer based in the London and New York – Epic Tomato offers the more extreme side of the vacation spectrum. The company claims to provide personal and guided vacations in a number of different experience categories in global locations of the vacationer’s choice.

Choosing an Adventure

The company’s clients can choose experience regions polar (traveling to such locations as Antarctica, Greenland or Norway); desert (Namibia, Mali, Jordan and more); jungle (Borneo, Guyana or New Guinea); mountainous (Morocco, Nepal or Canada, among others) or river-themed (Honduras, Costa Rica, Uganda, Nepal or New Guinea).

“What Epic Tomato does is take our clients to some of the world’s most isolated locations,” said Black Tomato founder, Tom Marchant. “Our clientele includes travelers seeking new adventures and taking them to some of the world’s most geographically extreme destinations. They pursue a sense of achievement and if possible to be–or at least feel like they are–pioneers in the type of adventures they are undertaking.”

The undertakings are led by the company’s own team of experts and are meant to be immersive, offering a look at remote environments and cultures, Marchant explained.

Who Does This Stuff?

According to Marchant, the company’s clients come from all over the world, but the majority hail from the United States and UK.

Says Marchant: “They are leaders of industries, they are groups of friends wanting to deviate away from the normal vacation, they are individuals wanting to push their physical boundaries and most recently we’ve seen families take their children on culturally insightful trips – for example meeting the Dani tribe in Borneo and learning from them about jungle survival or the traditions of The Tolai in Papua New Guinea.”

Beginnings

Black Tomato was formed in 2005 by Marchant, Matt Smith and James Merrett. We eschewed the view that you should not turn a passion into a job on the basis that if you are really passionate about something you will do it well and enjoy doing it,” explained Marchant. “Our passion was travel and that drove us to develop the idea for Black Tomato.”

The need for such a custom travel company came from adventure-minded clients with a decent amount of disposable income but without the time to adequately plan a mind-blowing vacation experience.

Right now, Tomato is working to expand, though is not looking for outside capital to do so. In addition to marketing, PR and word of mouth, the company uses partnerships to spread the word, including lifestyle sites like Daily Candy as well as in-house services at Google and Equinox Gyms.

On the Horizon…

There are a number of locations the company is seeking to expand to. “In terms of new areas for Epic to go into, there is still so much of South America to be explored such as the Peruvian Amazon,” Marchant said. “However, we’re looking to develop more trips in Asia, for instance around Ledakh in India, Bhutan, Nepal and Tsaartan in Mongolia. The latter is a particularly exciting new region for us where you climb Renchinlump, craft your own skis before skiing over to Khovsgul lake. Finally, parts of Central West Africa have real potential that we are currently exploring further with regard to introducing experiences out there. Cameroon and Gabon both fall into this potential development.”

In the next five years, Marchant said he hopes to grow the business internationally and become better known in the United States and UK.

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